Hell

[Grislygus]

I'm curious. I was always under the impression that the Christian bible made little to no mention of Hell's aesthetic, and that early versions of it portrayed Hell as cold, since it was removed from God's warmth and light.

So, If my admittedly shaky analysis is correct, where the hell did the 'modern' Fiery Red Goat Devil view of Hell come from?

[Gorlack the Destroyer]

Puritans.

[Grislygus]

Yes, the Puritans furthered the "fire and brimstone" thing with particular zeal, but the Catholic Church was ranting about it long before they did.

So when, exactly, did the icy cold dead zone from Dante's Inferno turn into a fiery hot spa ruled by a red little freak?

[ScruU2wice]

One of the rings of hell is suppose to be a firey pit. I don't remember which one.

[Sethomas]

Well, in Dante's work the center of hell is a frozen lake.

"The flames of Gehenna" is a statement that appears at least once in Scripture, I believe. The parable of Lazareth, I think, talks about unquenching thirst due to heat.

[kahljorn]

"since it was removed from God's warmth and light"

I think that's the accepted definition of hell, being absent from God's presence.
Which I don't understand because clearly we were removed from God's presence in the first book of the bible, which is where the idea of "original sin" or "Fall" comes from i guess.

[Grislygus]

I always intepreted is as that we fell from God's grace, but we haven't been entirely removed from his warmth, since we still qualify for salvation. I think.

"The flames of Gehenna" is a statement that appears at least once in Scripture, I believe. The parable of Lazareth, I think, talks about unquenching thirst due to heat.

...So, there were some references to Hellfire in scripture.

And Dante envisions the deepest, darkest pit of Hell to be cold, with the sinners submerged or, horribly, only partially submerged in the ice, with Brutus, Judas, and the other guy being eternally chomped on.

I've got that much, but I was under the impression that many other early religious texts refer to hell as cold, even before Dante's poem. So, if that is correct, did the idea of hellfire simply come back into fashion well after Dante? Or did people merely focus on the torment on the other levels of Dante's hell, rather than the icy pit?

[Sethomas]

Well, the most obvious explanation is that it was a loan concept from Paganism. The ancients saw volcanoes and such as gateways to the underworld, and "the underworld" became associated with Hades which in turn became Hell. People bitch all the time about how religious holidays were just co-opted from the Pagans, but that's really not a fault of Christianity so much as just a powerful tool of conversion.

[kahljorn]

"I always intepreted is as that we fell from God's grace, but we haven't been entirely removed from his warmth, since we still qualify for salvation."

I don't know God's pretty bitter in genesis. I thought being banished to a world where you feel pain and hunger always kind of synched up with hell(eternal pain right).
Another way to look at it is that humans disobeyed god or "Sinned" and were sent here. Isn't hell where god sends sinners ;O


I hope it's not too uncouth for me to talk about other forms of Hell:

http://www.buddhanet.net/wheel1.htm

Here's an interactive wheel I just found when I was looking for a picture, it's pretty cool, if you hold it above different parts of the wheel it gives you information on them. According to this some of the sections are depicting firey/icey hells. It's the one on the bottom.
Read the top big portion of the pie, it's the abode of false gods! I always liked that about buddhism, that you could feel that you are enlightened and supreme and eventually you still succomb and fall again.
Also check out the cardinal sins of the world in the center ;O Ignorance hatred and greed. Anyway the thing to notice is that this wheel is saying suffering, torture and torment exist everywhere within this world. Also notice that the lord of death(or "monster of impermanance" as they call him here but I thought it was supposed to be yama traditionally), the big scarey guy, is holding the entire world in his clutches.

[pjalne]

"The flames of Gehenna" is a statement that appears at least once in Scripture, I believe. The parable of Lazareth, I think, talks about unquenching thirst due to heat.

...So, there were some references to Hellfire in scripture.

There might be, but this is not one. Gehenna was a valley where they used to dump dead bodies and garbage and set it all on fire. So "you'll be burning in Gehenna" really means "you're gonna be killed dead and we'll dump you in a mass grave outside town and put you on fire."

The word Hell itself comes from the Norse Hel, which is the name of the god of Helheim, the underworld of those who died in sickness or with shame over their heads or some other not-dieing-in-war related fate.

[Sethomas]

I know that you're right as far as history goes, but the literary effect you're describing was lost in the Middle Ages when people forgot that Gehenna was a tangible valley and not a different plane of existence.

[Grislygus]

Right around the time that peasants couldn't (and weren't allowed to) read the bible, right?

[Sethomas]

If by "not allowed" you mean that hearing lections at mass was ample because a copy of the bible was about level with the cost of an average house in today's market, then sure, whatever. If you mean that it was illegal, then no.

[Grislygus]

I see. I didn't quite mean illegal, but yes, you more or less hit the nail on the head. How the hell were books distributed, anyway? Trade routes?

[kahljorn]

Books were handwritten back in the day so it would take some time and alot of money (they also didn't have high quality paper factories), add to that any translation work involved. Remember alot of the world back in the day was very "illiterate" and most of their knowledge was orally based.
I'd imagine their method of distribution was dependant on who was getting the book. Unless they had some kind of superstition about bringing books onto boats or something. Like Sethomas said most of the books were very expensive so usually they were made for specific reasons so they probably didn't have warehouses full of them.

[Sethomas]

Well, staple texts were their own commodity; people would bring them to learning centers as they collected them from travels and such. From there, monasteries would reproduce them by hand in scriptoriums for chapters of the bible to be given to Churches and books of hours or other philosophical works to the very very rich.

[Grislygus]

So, the insane popularity of works like the Divine Comedy or the Bible would have been due to scholarly institutions and nobility?

[kahljorn]

also priests and other learned people who had access. There were also libraries but I don't know if there were any restrictions placed on that...

the college library near here has an original copy of the dante's inferno ;o

[Sethomas]

"Popularity" is a totally different game in the litarary world when less than 10% of the population is literate, you know.

[Grislygus]

Well, yes, but the influence of a book obviously stretches beyond that ten percent when it entrenches itself as a core of European culture, no?

[Courage the Cowardly Dog]

There are five words translated hell.

The first is Hebrew "Sheol" which means the grave, but not just in a death way but in a suffering eternally sense. But it can just symbloize death but it's usually very derogatory. Does that make sense? I'm bad at explaining.

The "flames of gehenna" is actually a flaming landfill/grave for diseased bodies in Israel in the time of Jesus in the area of the valley of Hinnom, It's meant as a simile to hell fire cause the flames not only burn hot with sulfer but smell like CRAP! Jesus uses this to not only symbolize the fires of hell, but also as the trash/corpse heap "pluck out your eye cast it in Gehenna (the trash?) if it causes you to sin" Only Jesus has ever refered to hell by this Simile no one else in the Bible ever compares the two.

It is likely a Middla ages version of Gehenna is where the corpses were going when you heard bell ringing and "Bring out your dead"

"Tarturus" is the greek term meant to portray a place of infinite suffering. No word of the relation to Tartar sauce.

"Hades" which is inclusively reffering to the underworld in greek, but in Christianity/Judiasm Refers to Sheol where you reside between death and ressurection.

There is also the "lake of fire" which some scholars see as something that means annihilation in the end "hell and death are thrown into the lake of fire" others see it as an all inclusive unescapable final hell that will never see anyone new come or go from it. I think it's the annihilation thing but that's just me.

Revelation says those who are cast in the Lake of Fire, all record of them is blotted out, so it's as if they never existed, we won't cry for those in hell anymore because it will be as if they never existed and we will not remember them. Kind of a bittersweet way for God to "wipe away every tear" but it's better then remembering who they were and crying for the then annihilated soul you cared for and loved.

[kahljorn]

"Kind of a bittersweet way for God to "wipe away every tear" but it's better then remembering who they were and crying for the then annihilated soul you cared for and loved."

This is really weird to me because I wasn't aware that the physical body, it's memories and ego came along with the soul. I thought that was what died?
What is a "SOUL"?

"Well, yes, but the influence of a book obviously stretches beyond that ten percent when it entrenches itself as a core of European culture, no?"

I know the divine comedy was popularized within the church as dante was involved with the church somehow. Same with the bible. When people are preaching generally they are talking about the bible, so that's how it was "Popularized" when it was shared with the populace every sunday.
Cultural anthropology is a pretty vast subject they have classes for it at school.

[Grislygus]

I love cultural anthopology, and history in general, but my knowledge on the subject is always slightly vague.

And with that in mind, I could have sworn there were pre-Dante references to a frozen Hell. Can anybody back that up?

[Courage the Cowardly Dog]

Sheol and other translation of Hell reffering to the grave tend to be "cold" but that is reffering to the grave and not the spiritual hell.

Does it have to be christian/jewish/muslim hell? Cause i bet some of the others hells may be cold.

[kahljorn]

The tibetan buddhism thing I mentioned had a cold hell. Scroll up and read.

Sometimes I don't even know why I post on this message board.

Di Yu, the chinese hell, also has a frozen ice hell where they freeze disrespectful people. They also have something like 18 or 20 levels of hell, similar to dante's inferno.

[RaNkeri]

I'm curious. I was always under the impression that the Christian bible made little to no mention of Hell's aesthetic, and that early versions of it portrayed Hell as cold, since it was removed from God's warmth and light.

That might just be a symbolic description for hell, meaning that it's somewhat the opposite of the world we know. (For example, there is no hope and people do not care neither love each other) So, hell could be emotionlly cold, but physically hot and fiery place.

But hey, that's just me, and I might be wrong too. Just giving you guys a new point of view :(

[Grislygus]

Perhaps. I'm not well versed in biblical symbolism.

The tibetan buddhism thing I mentioned had a cold hell. Scroll up and read.

Sometimes I don't even know why I post on this message board.


I saw it, but I was angling for European lore. Though the thread encompasses Hell in all cultures, I have a tendency to talk about the Western view.

I did some researching into Di Yu, and wow, is it all-encompassing. The ice level is for kids who don't respect their elders.

[executioneer]

guys did you know that hell is other people

[Sethomas]

Well, that's in my facebook "quotes" section. Actually, it's "L'enfer--c'est des autres."

[Sethomas]

By the way, the Alexandrians used the word "Hades" to describe the underworld when authoring the Septuagint, and that played a big role in linking the pagan death with the Christian one centuries later. Before someone argues that early Christians would have used direct Hebrew, the truth is that they rarely did until Jerome, and even he took the Hebrew texts with a grain of salt. All the Gospels quote the Septuagint.

[Preechr]

If only your powers could be harnessed for politics.

[Sethomas]

Preechr, I support causes. Sometimes this involves me supporting progressive or conservative agendas. Like Plato says, the fault of not caring about politics is that you invariably end up ruled by your inferiors.

I supported Bush against Gore for a variety of reasons. I didn't think he could impose as much damage as he has, and I expected him to at least alleviate the problems abounding in our abortion policies. I gave him and his ilk a chance, and once he fucked it up and I was of age to vote I sided with a Democratic douchebag named Kerry. I've discussed a number of present issues going on with the Neoconservative movement with some of its loyal followers, who are or were very good friends of mine. Some of the times they seemed logically sound (albeit impractical or unrealistic), but what impressed me was that they were never the same as the hyped-up public reasons for those policies. I cannot in good conscience support a party founded on flagrant duplicity, even if mild duplicity is the foundation of all politics.

I throw that out because you seem to have me cut out as some kind of foaming-at-the-mouth liberal lemming. As for the backwards flattery, yes I can be prolix, but I don't think I've ever behaved in a deliberately pretentious way without some element of jest to justify it.

[kahljorn]

Let's discuss the "afterlife". Do you guys even believe in it? I don't know if I do. What kind of afterlife to you subscribe in and why?
I try to understand reincarnation but I've never heard anything that makes any sense. Although obviously all matter and energy is recycled ;/

Have you guys read any of the book sof the dead out there?

[Sethomas]

In my estimation, I think there are the three orthodox levels of afterlife: damnation, purgation, and paradise. However, I cannot imagine that hell is actually perdition--as I've stated long ago, the idea of never-ending torment is a logical contradiction of terms. Hell therefore becomes manifest as non-existence, oblivion.

Purgation is probably undertaken as a temporal waiting, most likely in a stupored state of "consciousness" for some period. I imagine just black and stunted ruminations.

It's worthless to speculate on what eternal reward there is for life, if any, but I think it has to be timeless in nature. The idea of "enjoying" something in the absence of arbitrary time is beyond the mind's grasp, but that's eschatology for you.

And yes, I ascert that if heaven exists, purgatory exists by almost absolute logical extension. I don't get the Protestant Fathers who decided that you can attain salvation by faith alone with no consequences ever, even if you're a murdering sociopath.

[kahljorn]

Hell as oblivion? That's interesting considering every eastern system is the opposite. The true heaven of buddhism, taoism and hinduism etc. is merging with oblivion or bliss, ultimate reality, chaos, the ocean before existence(greek mythology and many others), merging with infinity, merging with the cosmos, merging with God (the supreme or primordial in polytheistic systems) etc.
I think that kind of ties into what you were saying by a timeless reward. Also I feel it encompasses what God meant when he said, "I am that I am".

Do you estimate your memories and physical representation come with you? Anything you associate as your "Self"?

[Sethomas]

Memories possibly, but I think that somatic things like relative intelligence and emotional tendencies/predilections will be gone. What I take from Revelations in describing all the Faithful as being garbed alike in white is that human triteness will be conquered and we'll all essentially experience as being ourselves just a huge collective being. I know that sounds rather new-age-y, and I don't mean it in the sense that we all share one consciousness, but that everyone will experience heaven in the same manner. As I once said, I can't imagine there being Cubs versus White Sox arguments in heaven.

[kahljorn]

Well without emotional tendencies and relativity there wouldn't really be any motivations for people to argue cubs and whitesox. Emotions are e-motions after all, they are what motivates your body and self into responding to situations, this is especially true with sports.

What type of consciousness do you think you will have;what is the huge collective body? such as God's body? Do you think we return to the "I am that I am" status?

[Sethomas]

Well, I don't know. Nobody does. Tiny mustard seeds contemplating existence as a giant mustard plant is all we can be.

[Grislygus]

Have you guys read any of the book sof the dead out there?

I have, actually. A translated edition of the Egyptian book of the Dead.

Unfortunately, I got it from a museum bookstore when I was a kid, solely because I was expecting something along the lines of the Necronomicon. The text went right over my head and I got rid of it. :(

Now, I could kick myself because what little I remember sounds fascinating.

Hell as oblivion? That's interesting considering every eastern system is the opposite. The true heaven of buddhism, taoism and hinduism etc. is merging with oblivion or bliss, ultimate reality, chaos, the ocean before existence(greek mythology and many others), merging with infinity, merging with the cosmos, merging with God (the supreme or primordial in polytheistic systems) etc.
I think that kind of ties into what you were saying by a timeless reward. Also I feel it encompasses what God meant when he said, "I am that I am".

Do you estimate your memories and physical representation come with you? Anything you associate as your "Self"?

Well, it's always struck me that Eastern philosophy seems to emphasize unity with the universe, whereas Western philosophy emphasizes an isolated existence above it. The difference seems to be more or less consistent, and I personally see it as firstmost as a cultural difference, secondly a religious one. Not that I actually know any specific examples, or am able to back up my argument. This one's pure opinion.

I personally don't know what I believe Hell to be, but the religious individuals that I know who can actually have a logical discussion seem to believe that eternal punishment is unlikely.

As for Heaven, my belief is pretty much an extensively simplified version of Sethomas' statement. I believe that one will ascend to God's domain with all petty, human ego-filters discarded. As someone without a lot of experience with religion, I am unable to create a detailed picture.

[kahljorn]

"Tiny mustard seeds contemplating existence as a giant mustard plant is all we can be"

The mustard seed is equivalent to the jewel in the lotus of eastern traditions, the eternal unbreakable soul is what the mustard seed stands for. Right?


"A translated edition of the Egyptian book of the Dead."

You can find copies of the egyptian book of the dead online, you can find copies of almost any book t hat was popular before 1941, and some after.

Personally I don't see any difference between eastern and western cultures, i just think most people have the wrong idea about western religions. For example, why would people think t hey'd goto heaven and meet all of their family and friends there and everyone would be "Happy" and play videogames or do whatever they liked to do on earth. Happiness, family and friends is all a PHYSICAL and material concept. I don't think people understand the difference, usually.
To elucidate the previous emotions are part of a complicated brain process. Human emotions themselves are probably more complex than animal emotions due the bigger brain which gives us higher functionality. We also have bigger memories and a complicated social stratus. However all of these exist within the human body, or are produced or influenced by. All of these things should parish with you when you die.
You lose your ego, and if your soul is "Eternal" your ego wouldn't really matter in light of the eternal. In light of ego disolution I could see heaven and hell's existing, but they would be transient states. I think that is partly the buddhist idea.

Basically I think there's some reasonable things about the afterlife we could conclude just by seperating the difference between what being alive is and what being dead is.

[ziggytrix]

If there is an afterlife, I hope I get to tell God "seriously, what the fuck?"

I bet God would have a really good answer though.

Either that or He'd do the ethereal quivalent of pulling a quarter out from behind my ear and falling down laughing.

That'd be an acceptable answer, too.

[kahljorn]

http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/ebod/index.htm

there's the egyptian book of the dead if you want to read it, grislygus, but it's probably not what you'd expect.

[Grislygus]

I saw that... Is it just me, or does the site seem to have a slight Christian revisionist flavor to it? Still damn fascinating. I was also looking at this (http://www.touregypt.net/bkofdead.htm) somewhat gaudy site.

[kahljorn]

sacred-texts? No. The website has multicultural stuff, and most of the books and translations were done by people who aren't affiliated with them at all and are probably dead by now. Maybe I'm not sure what you meant, though.

[Grislygus]

Wait, I see... they've included Greek commentary. Allright, I get it now, I'm a little slow, but I've got it.

[kahljorn]

the guy who tranlated that is a pretty popular tranlator for egyptian stuff i think

[Grislygus]

He's pretty damned thorough.